Page:Addresses to the German nation.djvu/218

 The Church considered itself not so much a part of the earthly community as a colony from heaven quite foreign to the earthly community and sent out to enrol citizens for that foreign State, wherever it could take root. Its education aimed at nothing else but that men should not be damned in the other world but saved. The Reformation merely united this ecclesiastical power, which otherwise continued to regard itself as before, to the temporal power, with which formerly it had very often been actually in conflict. In that connection, this was the only difference that resulted from that event; there also remained, therefore, the old view of educational matters. Even in recent times, and until the present day, the education of the richer classes has been looked upon as the private concern of the parents, who might arrange it to their own satisfaction; and their children were usually put to school simply because some day it would be useful to them. The sole public education, that of the people, however, was simply education for salvation in heaven; the essential feature was a little Christianity and reading, with writing if it could be managed—all for the sake of Christianity. All other development of man was left to the blind and casual influence of the society in which they grew up, and to actual life. Even the institutions for scholarly education were intended mainly for the training of ecclesiastics. Theology was the important faculty; the others were merely supplementary to it, and usually received only its leavings.

165. So long as those who stood at the head of the Government remained in the dark concerning its true aim and were filled with that anxiety of conscience about the salvation of themselves and others, one could rely with certainty on their zeal for this kind of public